


We Dreamed, We Dropped

by yourhandiheld



Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: Gen, Implied Axel/Roxas - Freeform, Spoilers - Kingdom Hearts Dream Drop Distance, a what-if that takes place after Dream Drop Distance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-25
Updated: 2013-11-25
Packaged: 2018-01-02 14:28:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,172
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1057866
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yourhandiheld/pseuds/yourhandiheld
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is how it starts.</p><p>This is how Sora realizes that he's been blurring his and Roxas's memories together after the aftermath of the Mark of Mastery exam, and this is how he tries to cope with realizing that Roxas disappeared for good after he'd given him his share of memories. </p><p>How he's not just Sora anymore, but Sora-and-Roxas, and that everything hurts more this way.</p>
            </blockquote>





	We Dreamed, We Dropped

**Author's Note:**

  * For [epicionly](https://archiveofourown.org/users/epicionly/gifts).



> a few days ago epic and i were wondering if in dream drop distance, roxas giving his memories to sora meant that he was joining with him for good rather than just opening his heart TO sora, and i wondered how sora would be trying to cope with being part-roxas rather than sora with roxas. this game has a lot of identity issues and they're fun but painful to explore!!!

Falling asleep feels a lot like drowning, except it doesn't hurt quite as much.  
  
The realization of what this sensation is comes to Sora exactly five hours after the mark of mastery exam had finished, when everyone had been sent off to bed. It engulfs him in a lukewarm blanket, with gentle finger-like tendrils dragging him down and down and down again until he feels himself forgetting what it is to be. And this is okay. This is him falling asleep of his own volition, him falling asleep in a bed that was for now his own, and him choosing to dream his own dreams.  
  
And this is okay.  
  
-  
  
 _("This is why it has to be you.")_  
  
-  
  
"Did it hurt?" Sora asks. His question jolts Lea out of what appeared to be a mental zone of absolute focus; Sora had that kind of effect on people, that bizarre ability to zap the attention right to him, not unkindly, but unexpectedly.   
  
"Hm?"  
  
"You know." Sora points at the spot hidden behind Lea's newly acquired yellow scarf with his keyblade. "When you became a person again."  
  
Lea gives him a look. "You trying to skimp off ol' Yen Sid's training regimen or is this a real question?" Lea himself hasn't stopped swinging his blade around, continuing to surprise Sora with the diligence he devoted to missions and training - the very same diligence and care that Sora lacked, partly because he's still kind of worn out by a messed up sleep cycle and partly because he doesn't actually do so well with following orders.  
  
"Real question, promise," Sora says, crossing his heart with his free hand.  
  
Lea appears to give it some thought. He's a hard enough person to read, Sora soon finds out, as he can never really tell what Lea is thinking, well, ever. It's as if Sora was given the ability to learn and do all these things, but the ability to understand Lea was left out of his personal bundle of talents. It's a bit frustrating.  
  
"You'd have to ask Axel," Lea answers eventually, briefly showing a row of white teeth before uncurling his lip. He doesn't seem offended by the question, but there's still something in his eyes that tells Sora not to press any further.  
  
"But - "  
  
"C'mon," Lea says with a wink. "If we finish this up fast, we'll have time to figure out some sorta reward for all the extra work he's making us do."  
  
He disappears under a curl of smoke, because Lea has a penchant for throwing Firas around as well as bit of a flair for the dramatic. Everybody figures that he still feels tied to the red-hot flash of flames, but nobody ever thinks to ask if the fire burns him now. If the flames love Lea as much as they loved Axel.  
  
Sora swallows down the comparisons, the questions, the sear of fire in his own throat, and follows after him.  
  
-  
  
This is what it's like to fall asleep.  
  
He had always found it to be peaceful before; the silent way the restless world came to a standstill as he dropped, the murmur that crept into his ears to mute out the sounds of life going on. But it doesn't feel like that anymore.  
  
These nights, as Sora feels himself being pulled under, it's just cold and dark and scary and it's -  
  
lonely.  
  
Unbearably lonely.  
  
-  
  
Sora used to dream of the people Roxas had once known. He doesn't anymore, but he remembers what the dreams were like, remembers the warmth of Hayner-Pence-Olette's smiles as they turned to look at him. Except sometimes - only sometimes - Sora finds himself hesitant to admit that he can't tell anymore if the smiles are directed at him at all. If he's dreaming of Data-them or Real-people-them. He used to know the difference, used to be able to tell if his dreams were Roxas's or if his dreams were his.  
  
Do Data-people have hearts? Can data-smiles make a person feel the same way real smiles do?  
  
He finds out soon enough that he's very bad at masking his emotions when Riku asks him, very plainly, during a training mission in Twilight Town, if he wanted to switch places with Kairi. He stops Sora with a hand on Sora's shoulder after casting a Stopra on the mission clock. "She's assigned in Traverse with Lea."  
  
"Huh?" Sora says, caught by surprise by the proposal. He mirrors Riku's pose, shifting out of his habitual crouch to heft his keyblade over his shoulder.  
  
"You don't look very happy to be here," Riku says slowly.  
  
"But I like it here," Sora argues. "And you know I want to see the gang when we finish here. I was thinking we could have ice cream with them at the top of the tower, like back in the good old days."  
  
"If we finish," Riku says. His expression shifts into one of uncertainty. "Because at this rate, we might not even be done before the sun sets." His eyes search Sora's. "You like ice cream?"  
  
Sora shifts in place, feels that same hesitance creep into him the same way it does after awaking from a Twilight dream. "Well, they do. And I do too."  
  
Way to the Dawn disappears in a flash of fading light. "…yeah?"  
  
"Mhm," Sora says, letting the Kingdom Key disappear too. "Sea-salt ice cream. Our favourite."  
  
The way Riku looks at him makes him feel uneasy. "Sora," Riku says, just as slowly as before. "I won't pretend to know what it's like to have someone else's memories in your head, but you aren't Roxas. They aren't even really Roxas's friends. Data-based simulations, remember?"  
  
That's how it starts.  
  
With emerald beach-coloured eyes staring at him like he's doing something wrong, and a hand on his shoulder that feels anything but comforting for all that it's become so heavy.  
  
That's how it starts, how Sora begins to realize that he's been blurring his and Roxas's memories together, and that he'd never actually had ice cream with Hayner-Pence-Olette. That he'd tasted sea-salt ice cream once and didn't actually like it that much. That he doesn't actually even like ice cream much at all.  
  
"R…ight."  
  
He nods his head as Riku continues to watch him. He flexes his fingers and curls them around the hilt of the Kingdom Key, letting his keyblade anchor him to reality as he tries very hard not to look down. He stretches his mouth into a grin in spite of the way a coldness has begun to settle into his gut. He gives Riku a thumbs-up. "Let's finish this before that spell wears you out, Master," Sora says, dragging the vowels out of Riku's newly-earned title. The playful tone serves him well because Riku blinks and colours a little at the ears, the very image of a modest - and embarrassed - Master. And just like that, Sora's let off the hook.  
  
The cold feeling in his gut doesn't go away, leaving him to wonder, much later that day, if casting Fira around him would do anything to get rid of it.  
  
Sora can't even remember if he'd gone to see the gang at all that day.  
  
-  
  
The first thing he does upon jolting upright in the bed Yen Sid had told him was his for the entirety of his stay at the Mysterious Tower is grasp at his chest. He tugs violently at the swath of fabric that helped hide his heart from the world. He's anything but gentle in the way he handles himself, not gentle as he palpates his fingers roughly around, pushing hard enough to feel the bones of his ribcage curled around his heart that was aching.  
  
It hurt.  
  
-  
  
"You know," Sora begins to say, feeling strangely out of place as he swings his legs back and forth from where he's sat on a window sill at Disney Castle. "I've been having these weird thoughts lately." The words feel oddly like déjà-vu before they even leave his mouth.  
  
Goofy turns his head up, humouring him even though Sora technically shouldn't be here and Goofy technically shouldn't be slacking off either.  
  
Sora stares up at the sky, sees the colour of his eyes in them, sees the colour of Roxas's eyes too. He doesn't even know why it occurs to him to think of Roxas, or why when he thinks of Roxas, all he can really see is a mirror image of himself, only with lips pulled down and eyebrows set permanently in a downwards slant.  
  
He extends a hand out, pulls the keyblade out into the light to watch the sun twinkle on it.  
  
He's been having a hard time feeling like himself the past few days.  
  
Being with Riku puts him on edge, and this little gnawing in his head makes him feel like he should keep an eye out for Riku turning on him and fighting him to knock him out and drag him - somewhere. Spending time with Kairi just leaves him feeling like he's done something incredibly wrong to hurt her but she says he hasn't so he doesn't know what. Sometimes he even imagines her with black hair. Missions with Lea leave him feeling bizarrely empty. He doesn't like feeling that way.  
  
Technically, he already knows he's going to get chewed out for playing hooky on training day, but he hasn't seen Donald or Goofy in days and he misses them. He bunches his face into a frown. Had Roxas ever known Donald and Goofy?  
  
Were the memories of Donald and Goofy in the past real? Or was he blurring Roxas's memories with his again?  
  
He feels ashamed for even having to ask, for questioning even for a second the validity of their friendship, but Sora can't help it and says, all casual, "Like, is any of this for real? Or not?"  
  
He turns his head as Donald squats down next to him. "Want me to cast Thunder on you to see?"  
  
The playful suggestion that is just so _Donald_ drags a chortle out of Sora's throat. "No thanks," he says with a grin.  
  
"Aw," Donald squawks, the perfect image of disappointment. Sora flicks Donald's hat off with the tip of the keyblade and laughs at the squabble Donald starts when it falls right out the window and down onto the royal garden below. Goofy's muffled Hyuk-hyuks echo behind him as he jumps off the window to retrieve it, and bizarrely enough, Sora has never felt so sure of himself and his existence before this moment now.  
  
"Suppose this is all fake?" He calls out from the bottom, looking up at his two friends. "Suppose my memories of being your friend weren't my memories at all?"  
  
Goofy's ears dangle as he peers down from the window, but before he can say anything, Donald shrieks out a Thunder! and Sora smells his hair sizzling on his scalp before he actually registers the split-second shock of pain.  
  
"You actually did it!" Sora says, pointing an accusing finger.  
  
"Because you're being silly!" Donald says back, pointing his staff down at Sora with the hint of a warning that he is very, very prepared to do it all over again if it comes down to it.  
  
It's all Goofy can do to hold Donald back as Sora scales the height of the wall to wrestle Donald the way he used to when they had first met in Traverse Town all that time ago before the three of them explode into a heaping pile of laughter on the marbled castle floors.  
  
"Gawrsh, Sora," Goofy says in that Goofy way. "You're _our_ friend, remember?"  
  
Sora swats a fallen feather he'd accidentally plucked off of Donald from his face and smiles. "Yeah."  
  
Donald conks him on the head with the butt of his staff before embracing him in a hug. "And don't you forget it!"  
  
-  
  
Sora knows exactly what hurting feels like.  
  
He remembers being six, standing tall and proud on his favourite tree at Destiny Islands because he'd beaten Riku at a race. He remembers losing his footing not a minute after, recalls pain blossoming absolutely everywhere when he'd landed on his ankle. He remembers the first time a heartless had struck him, how cold it had felt and how much it had hurt until he'd found the potion in his pocket and had downed it to make the pain go away. He remembers Ansem and Xemnas, remembers how often his heart had been made a target, painted into a bullseye with red and white rings, and then painted all over again with a bright X because X-marks-the-spot.    
  
But this is a different ache.  
  
He's up in the middle of the night again, wrenched out of bed by the pain of something missing, but he's so sick of it that he doesn't just want to sit idly and wait for it to go away.  
  
" _Cure_ ," Sora says. His other hand fumbles around in the dark for a potion, for anything that might help because magic isn't working. He tries the spell again, hears the tinkle of bells above his head, feels terribly unchanged. "Come on, _Cure_."  
  
All of a sudden he's fourteen again, lost and scared because his home is disappearing before his very eyes, because this is exactly what that felt like, like he was losing something or remembering he'd lost something but couldn't remember what.  
  
He exhausts himself by morning, shouting _Cure-Cura- **Curaga**_ at himself with a worried frenzy that overcomes him before he can really understand exactly why he's so desperate and so afraid, but by the time the sun has risen, the ache has dulled down to a low throb, and it was time to start the day.  
  
Sora puts on his best Sora smile through all the good-mornings and the pass-me-the-orange-juice at the table and tells himself he'll try again later.  
  
-  
  
Perhaps it had been a bad idea to go on a training mission with Lea in Twilight Town.  
  
He knows he should have said something, should have said No thank you, Master Yen Sid, I think Kairi should handle this one, I think I should be doing recon at Traverse again, who knows where the rest of the Organization members came to, right?  
  
He could even have lied. Anything to get out of it.  
  
But it's too late, really, because at this point in time he's dizzy with all the twists and turns under the tram area, and alongside the headache that's throbbing in the back of his head, he's losing sight of Lea, who is doing suspiciously well at navigating around this place, like he'd been here before.  
  
"How do you even know how to get around here?" Sora asks with a moan. The way his voice echoes loudly back at him makes his head hurt even more.  
  
"Been here before."  
  
"With Riku?"  
  
"Nah," Lea says. " _Before_."  
  
Oh. Sora understands.  
  
He finds Lea standing next to one of the tunnel exits twirling his keyblade lazily with one hand in a way that looked so languid and so - so Lea. "Out of breath already?" he says. "Geez, I didn't think the hero of worlds would be so bad at cardio with that big ol' heart of yours." He looks ridiculously pleased with himself with the pun, baring his teeth again, and even Sora finds himself hiding a smile behind a brush of his nose.  
  
"Let's just say it's an off day for me," Sora says.  
  
"Been having an awful lot of those, haven't you," Lea says rather than asks. Sora is pretty sure that there's concern hidden somewhere in the undertones of his voice because he hears a bit of it, even if Lea is hard to read.   
  
Sora watches him beneath his fringe, a little bit amazed by the way Lea seems totally unfazed by the way he's just staring at him, as if Lea can't be fazed by anything at all. For all that a fair amount of his missions have been with Lea, Sora can't even say that he knows him very well. For all that he knows, Kairi might know him loads better. She and Lea spend more time together, the two of them, second to Lea and the King, and Sora wonders if maybe he's become second to Lea in terms of usefulness. He'd been cutting missions a lot lately and maybe they were all finally noticing.  
  
Absently, he brings a hand up to grasp at his chest.  
  
"You never answered my question before," Sora asks, putting his keyblade away. He watches Lea do the same.  
  
"You ask a lot of questions."  
  
Even if it is true, Sora sticks out his tongue. Lea chortles, saying, "Bitch, bitch," with a roll of his shoulders.  
  
Sora can feel something inside him tremble at the familiarity of it all, and hears the echo of _'Ready to RTC?'_ in the back of his mind. He doesn't even know what that means.  
  
"I asked you a question before, about what it was like when you got your heart back. If it hurt." Sora continues to watch him and catches the way Lea freezes a little mid-stretch. He's usually always so fluid in the way he moves, even though Sora would have expected him to be clumsier, what with the long limbs and sloping way he walked and talked. "You know," Sora says. "When you became Lea again."  
  
Lea sighs, drags a hand through his hair. "Now why would you want to know about that?" He averts Sora's gaze for the first time, attention darting out back where Tunnel 5 leads for a moment like he isn't sure where exactly this was all leading to and whether or not he wanted to be looking at Sora when it did get from A to B.  
  
"Because…" You look so familiar to me, and I'd only ever met you when you were a bad guy who wasn't actually all that bad anymore. Because being around you makes me sad and I don't know why. Because sometimes I want to tell you you're a winner but I don't even know what that means.  
  
"Because I've been having an off day," Sora decides to say, playing with a smile on his lips that feels just a little bit sad.  
  
Lea makes a sound that's something in between a scoff and a sigh. "Yeah?" He doesn't wait for Sora to nod, and just lets his shoulders slope down like something heavy is pressing down on them, like there's a weight and he doesn't like it. "Me too, Sora."  
  
They both slump down against the brick wall; Sora first, Lea shortly after. And they stare up at the dirty old ceiling with wet patches and mould as if they were expecting to see something nicer, something like the sky on fire or the setting sun.  
  
"I did technically answer your question," Lea tells him. He's probably decided that eye contact was acceptable, because his gaze settles on Sora for a bit before going right back up to searching the ceiling.  
  
"No, you told me to ask Axel. Which is what I'm doing. I'm asking you."  
  
The exasperation that was there for all the three entire days after the Mark of Mastery exam is back on Lea's face, the familiar roll of the eyes and bunched up eyebrows and lip curled in annoyance. "No, see, my name is - "  
  
"Axel, Lea, you're the same person, aren't you?" Sora says.  
  
"Wanna do some math?" Lea says.  
  
"Well - "  
  
He wrenches his keyblade out of the air, curls his fingers around the hilt but only after the flames and little dancing embers die away. Sora bites down his question of Does fire like you or Axel more because technically, he'd be going against his own words. And Lea loves fire. You don't come between things that people love.  
  
"You're not going to vandalize the place, are you?" Sora asks.  
  
Lea snorts. "We kill heartless and cast all sorts of destructive magic in here and you're worrying about me carving into some icky old asphalt nobody even cares about?"  
  
It sounds a bit silly to worry about, now that Sora hears it voiced out loud. "Well," he says childishly, but doesn't continue and allows Lea the satisfaction of laughing at him a little.  
  
"Ok, get this," Lea says. Sora crosses his legs together and leans forward.  
  
The grating sound that the keyblade makes when it carves into the ground hurts Sora's ears, but Lea doesn't seem so bothered. The first thing he writes is this:  
  
 _Lea - heart = Axel_  
  
Sora doesn't say anything, not even when a familiar gnawing feeling tears away at the inside of his stomach. Lea doesn't wait for him to give any sign of understanding before carving the next equation.  
  
 _Axel + heart = Lea_  
  
"But how do you know?" Sora asks immediately. Lea stares at him, hovering his keyblade over his name. "How do you know that you're Lea and not Axel, how do you know that Axel isn't just a really confused Lea?"  
  
"I didn't say I'd answer more questions," Lea says, looking a bit bothered by the question. He shrugs his shoulders less out of it being a meaningful gesture and more as a habit. "And I told you you ask a lot."  
  
"I know. Okay, I know, but this is important to me."  
  
This has Lea frozen again.  
  
"It's important to me," Sora repeats, clutching again at his heart, at the place on his chest that feels empty and alone and aching. "I have all these friends and all these people connected to me but my heart feels lonely. I don't understand why that is. I'm Sora. I have a heart, I'm a somebody, I'm Roxas-plus-heart according to your stupid math, I'm Sora and up until the stupid exam I thought I was just taking care of Roxas's heart until he got his own body, but some days I feel like I'm him and my heart just hurts. "  
  
Lea sighs. Drags a hand through his hair. Sora watches helplessly as he goes through the motions, and Lea looks back at him just as lost, just as hurt, just as confused that Sora would ever claim to think he knew what being Roxas would feel like, even though really, Sora would be the only closest bet.  
  
"Wish I could help you, kiddo," he says, and Sora feels infinitely more alone. "But I can't."  
  
"But _why?"_  
  
With a flurry of flames, Lea's keyblade disappears, leaving his hand grasping at nothing.  
  
"Because my heart feels lonely too."  
  
-  
  
Sora wakes up with the sun.  
  
He think of everything that's happened to him, thinks of the people he's met, thinks of all the people he's come to love, thinks even of his Hayner-Pence-Olette who don't eat ice cream with him, of data Hayner-Pence-Olette who do, and of black-haired Kairi too.  
  
He stares at his face in the mirror, at the way even his spikes look like they're drooping, stares at the blue of his eyes and how they look so sad.  
  
"What's missing?" He asks himself, very quietly, just in case someone was listening in. He doesn't want anyone to know that he's hurting. There's already been so much pain that he doesn't want to add to it. There's so much he has to fix, that they're all training so hard for just so they can fix it and be normal and happy again. "What am I missing?"  
  
He dives deep into his own heart and finds it scary that there isn't another person there. He thinks he recalls a voice telling him that he's lucky, but he's not even sure if that's a recollection or an imagination.  
  
 _You're lucky, Sora._  
  
 _You're lucky, you're lucky, you're lucky._  
  
He stops looking at the mirror for every morning after that.  
  
-  
  
He skips off training again, to Riku's great annoyance, but not even Riku knows where to look for him.  
  
It's simple, though, really.  
  
Sora finds himself in Twilight Town, the real one, because he's tried to find his way back to the Data-one just to see Data Hayner-Pence-Olette again, but the computer is still broken, and he knows that it would be stupid to try and fix it. What does he know about computers, anyway?  
  
He finds himself at Lea's not-so-mathematical equation, finds himself kneeling down beside it to carve his own because that's the only way he can get it out, get out this ache in his heart because it hurts so much no matter how often he casts Cure on it.  
  
 _Sora - Heart = Roxas_  
  
 _Roxas + Heart = Sora_  
  
 _Sora + Roxas =_  
  
But Sora's never been good at math, let alone good at not-math.  
  
He stares at his equation and cries until it hurts, really physically hurts, and wonders why it was that it hurts more after their hearts had joined as one than when they had both been split in two. And he misses Roxas. Misses the comfort of Roxas's heart. Misses it the way Axel+Heart does.  
  
Misses the way it felt to be Sora and not _Sora-and-Roxas._


End file.
